Resources

This white paper reviews literature related to trust in elections.

Partisan actors in the United States have recently politicized trust in election administration. This paper suggests solutions for election officials to rebuild trust in democratic processes.

In this paper, authors examine how polling place closures following the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision affected voter wait times during Georgia's 2016 presidential election. Using queueing theory and empirical data, it quantifies the impact of consolidating polling locations on wait times, with particular attention to how closures affected different communities. Authors provide evidence linking post-Shelby polling place reductions to measurably longer lines.

Report summarizing ways election officials can use public information campaigns to restore voter trust in election administration.

In this paper, authors develop an algorithm that can reduce racial disparities in polling place access by suggesting improved placements for polling places from a list of identified public locations at the state level.

This working paper evaluates communication strategies—such as voter education, official messaging, corrections, or prebunking—that aim to increase confidence in elections.

This panel explores a new set of conservative principles to build trust in elections.

After discussions with election officials from Los Angeles County, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas, this project used messaging experiments with nearly 8,500 Americans following the 2022 U.S. midterm elections to measure the impact on trust. It found that state and local election officials can be strongly effective at increasing trust in their own state elections.

This paper uses geographic discontinuities at block boundaries to identify the causal effect of polling place assignment on voter turnout, finding that distance to and familiarity with a polling location matter for participation.

This resources provides a step-by-step protocol for test voting system usability and accessibility functions in use, including how well the ballot presents voters with options and allows them to confirm their choices while marking and verify their ballot before casting. This resources is intended for state certification programs and election offices evaluating a new voting system.

Academic paper examining the use of audits following elections to improve voter confidence.

This report provides a comprehensive review of the existing literature on in-person voting to determine best practices and identify areas where more research is needed, covering both operational features and the voter experience.